


Not What It Looks Like

by nirejseki, robininthelabyrinth (nirejseki)



Series: Coldflash Week 2018 [4]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Bad Matchmaking, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Matchmaking, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-25 03:29:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14369943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/robininthelabyrinth
Summary: Everyone is betting on when Len and Barry are going to confess that they're together - except, of course, for the little fact that they're not actually together.Are they?





	Not What It Looks Like

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [[授权翻译]并非看上去那样 / Not What It Looks Like](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17782967) by [kiy900](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiy900/pseuds/kiy900)



> For Coldflashweek2018: Fake Relationship AU
> 
> Coldflash prompt - Len and and Barry are caught in a compromising position by team Flash. The team is absolutely sure that ColdFlash has been a thing for forever and this is confirmation - though in actuality nothing has/was going on with Len/Barry, but the two decide to go with it and get together for real.

“This – isn’t what it looks like,” Barry says helplessly. 

“It really isn’t,” Snart says tersely. 

In fairness, it actually _wasn’t_. The explosion had torn up both of their outfits – luckily Snart had been wearing some sort of sexy leather jacket instead of his beloved parka (laundry day, maybe?) and Barry had barely gotten them out of there, but having all of his friends and family find him holding Snart in sort of a swoon-like dip, both of them practically half-naked, their faces inches from each other, is just plain old awkward.

“I _knew_ it!” Iris exclaims. She and Cisco fist-bump. 

Barry blinks.

“Knew…what?”

“You couldn’t have kept it under wraps by like another month?” Joe grouses. “I had money riding on it.”

“Money riding on _what_?”

“I knew they couldn’t hold out that long,” Iris brags.

“You’re a shark,” Cisco tells her admiringly.

“I mean, I already knew I lost,” Caitlin says with a shrug. “Just tell me when to pay up.”

“Pay up?” Barry asks, starting to feel a distinctly sinking feeling and he doesn’t even know why. “What were you betting on?”

“When the two of you would reveal your relationship, obviously,” Caitlin says. 

“Or when we’d catch you,” Joe says with a shrug.

Barry glances at Snart, who’s apparently been shocked into full-on gaping – quite an accomplishment. 

“We’re not dating,” Snart says.

“You don’t have to deny it _now_ ,” Cisco says. “I mean, sure, when it was all sexy villain-superhero can never be together star-crossed lovers, yeah, but we all know, so you can drop it already.”

“No, seriously, he’s right,” Barry says quickly. Where in the world did they get the idea..? “We’re not dating. Not even a little.”

Iris snorts. “Sure, Bear. Mysterious late-night ‘planning sessions’ –”

“He’s a criminal! He keeps nighttime hours!”

“- you running around visiting all his favorite places –”

“I was _looking for him_!”

“Exactly!”

“No – I mean – I was looking for him so he could _help out_!”

“I’m sure he’s been helping you out plenty,” Cisco sniggers.

Snart has his eyes closed in pain. “Scarlet,” he says flatly.

“I love their nicknames for each other,” Iris says to Caitlin, who giggles agreeably. 

Snart ignores them. “ _Fix this_ ,” he growls in his chilliest voice, and sweeps out of there.

Leaving Barry with –

Them.

* * *

“You won’t believe what happened today,” Len says when Mick gets home.

He’s kinda been waiting to say it for a few hours, because today was just _weird_.

Hilarious, but weird.

He's not even counting the whole meta-explosion-thing. 

“What?” Mick asks, putting a box or two of roast chicken into the fridge and pulling out the ingredients for a sandwich. Len would ask if the chicken was purchased or if Mick just turned his heat gun onto a local farm, but honestly, he really doesn’t want to. He eats what Mick puts on the table, and that's good enough. 

Either way, it's not important now. He has something much funnier to discuss. 

“Scarlet’s little group of sidekicks apparently think I’ve been sleeping with him,” Len announces.

Mick blinks at him, starting to put together his sandwich. “Okay,” he says. “Mazel tov?”

“What? No – _no_ , Mick. I’m not _actually_ sleeping with him.”

Mick frowns at him. “Woulda thought we were better friends than that, Snart.”

“Better – what?” Len is totally lost. Mick usually makes more sense than this. 

“It ain’t like you two aren’t obvious,” Mick says, sounding injured. “And you told _his_ friends first?”

Len stares, abruptly realizing the problem.

“Mick," he says. "I’m not sleeping with him.”

Mick heaves a big put-upon sigh. “Of course you ain’t,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “You know I don’t judge, right?”

“You’re so pan-romantic I think you’ve been romancing our toaster behind my back,” Len agrees. Mick cheerfully flips him off, but in Len's defense, he is incredibly protective of that stupid toaster. In fairness, it _is_ the awesome 34th century toaster they got while on Legends, so Mick’s affection might even qualify as reciprocal... “I know you’re okay with me being pan, too. But that’s – that’s not what’s going on here -”

“I ain’t gonna judge you on the age difference either,” Mick says agreeably. “If that’s what you’re worried about. Love’s love.”

“Mick, please stop talking in platitudes, you know it creeps me out. And I’m not _worried_ about the age difference –”

“Good, glad the two of you have talked about that.”

“We haven’t talked about that!”

“Really? You really oughta. It’s a big issue. You shouldn’t just leave it unsaid.”

“I – but – wait, since when do you support open communication in relationships?” Len asks. This is not how he thought this evening would go. "You suck at communication. _I_ suck at communication. We _bond_ over how much we suck at communication."

“My shrink says it’s important,” Mick says with great dignity.

“I thought your shrink dumped you after you torched her car.”

“I only torched her car because she told me that she thought my issues with aggression were due to hanging out too much with black people.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t _justified_ in torching it. I said that she dumped you as a result.”

“Got a new one.”

“You did? _When_? And when do you even go see them?” 

As far as Len knows, Mick hasn’t even be out of the house for more than a few hours, usually on a food-related quest, for the last week or two. 

“Around,” Mick says vaguely. “Not the point. Talking’s important. You and Scarlet ain’t never gonna last if you don’t start talking about shit now.”

“Me and – Mick! I’m _not dating the Flash_!”

Mick shakes his head. “You’ll have to give up the lying sometime, boss; it's just getting embarrassing by this point. And please, don’t call him the Flash at home; I don’t want to get involved in your kinky little superhero-supervillain games.”

“ _Games_ – they’re not – we _are_ superhero and supervillain – Mick!”

Mick finishes making his sandwich. “Let me know when you’re ready to come clean,” he advises Len, and walks out of the room, leaving Len gaping behind him.

* * *

“- and it’s not _just_ that they think we’re dating, it’s that they won’t stop _talking_ about it!” Barry exclaims. 

“Uh-huh,” Oliver says.

“It’s just frustrating, you know?”

“Not – really?”

“I get you,” Felicity offers.

“Thanks,” Barry says with a sigh. “At least _someone_ does.”

“Yeah,” Felicity says, nodding. “I mean, when we were together, Oliver and I mostly hid our relationship from our enemies, not our friends, but it was really hard to manage it. I’m actually really impressed you and Snart have gotten this far without being found out.”

Barry is nodding, but then he pauses and replays that sentence in his head.

“Felicity,” he says. “We’re not together.”

“Uh, _hello_? You can’t hide from the hacker queen,” she laughs. “I’ve seen you going into his safehouses late at night when you think no one’s looking. Every day for a week.”

“To plan _strategy_ ,” Barry protests. Snart had insisted; apparently Mick had contracted the flu and couldn’t be left alone at night, so if Barry wanted help fighting his newest (inferior) ice-themed enemy, he needed to consult with Snart at his place. “Not for – we’re not dating!”

“It’s okay,” Oliver says. “I had a bit of a fling with this girl – we call her the Huntress –”

“You had a bit more than a fling with Deathstroke, too,” Barry points out, then quickly rushes on to “Not that I have a fling with Snart! Because I don’t!” before Oliver shoots him with arrows again.

Oliver’s still glaring. 

“You hang out all the time,” Felicity points out. “You smile when you talk about him.”

“He’s funny, that’s all!”

“You take risks to rescue him.”

“He’s a good ally! He’s – I just –” Barry decides to stop now. He’s just digging himself in deeper.

“We’re very happy for you two,” Felicity says. “We really hope you’ll be comfortable admitting it to us sometime soon. We’ll be very accepting.”

“What, even Oliver?” Barry ask despite himself. 

“I would never want to stand in the way of you finding true love,” Oliver says. His jaw is a bit clenched, but he sounds very (painfully) sincere. “Even if it is with a villain.”

“I – wait – true love?”

“Oliver,” Felicity scolds. “I told you that we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. They’re just dating; they’re not getting married.”

_Married?!_

“As far as we know, anyway,” she adds, pinning Barry with an interested look. “Need any help planning?”

Barry has a momentary flash of image, Iris and Felicity and Cisco all teaming up to plan his wedding to a man he’s not even dating (Caitlin would be cheering on the sidelines but also hates wedding planning with an unholy vengeance and probably would absent herself).

“You know, there’s a crime happening in Central now,” he says hastily. “Super urgent. Gotta go. Bye!”

And then he’s off. 

“You know, he didn’t even get a message from his comms…” he hears Felicity say to Oliver.

He speeds up.

The world has gone _insane_.

* * *

“I’m telling you, even _I_ don’t know what’s gotten into Mick this time,” Len hisses to the phone receiver.

“This reception is pretty shitty. Are you hiding in the closet again?” Lisa asks, unimpressed. 

Yes, Len is hiding in the closet again. There’s no shame in that.

“It’s the only place I know there aren’t bugs,” he points out.

“If Mick wanted to bug you, he’d make a point of putting it in the closet since you always take stressful phone calls there and you know it.”

“That’s not the _point_. The point is that Mick’s acting weird and, well, he’s – not the only one.”

Iris West had come up to him yesterday in the street and apologized for anything she might have said that would have made him upset. She wanted to restart their relationship on the right foot now that he’s dating her foster brother.

Which Len is not.

At least, he’s pretty sure he’s not?

(Cisco Ramon sent an email with plans for an industrial-grade ice-cream maker that could be powered by the cold gun as a peace offering. What the fuck _even_. Though Len is totally making one, because ice cream.)

“Okay, okay. What’s gone wrong?” Concern sharpens her voice. “Wait, is this another Bivolo thing?”

“No, not a Bivolo thing.”

“Time Master thing? Meta thing?”

“No. I mean – I don’t think so.”

“Barry thing?”

“Maybe,” Len concedes. Though Barry had seemed just as weirded out by all this as Len is. Maybe Barry changed the timeline and didn’t notice it somehow? “Not sure.”

“What _is_ it, then?”

“Mick seems to think I’m dating Barry.”

A moment of silence.

“Is that all?”

“What do you mean, _is that all_?! That's enough by itself! And even if it wasn't, it’s not just him! _Everyone_ thinks I’m dating him!”

“Aren’t you?”

“Lise!”

“I mean, I think we just all assumed –“

“ _Lisa_!”

“I don’t think it’s a timeline change or anything,” she says. “I think it may just be an assumption.”

“But –”

“You talk about him _all the time_ ,” she points out. “You make plans to get his attention. You get sulky when he _doesn’t_ pay you attention. You offer to help him out all the time – and you never offer to help _anyone_ out.”

“He pays me for it,” Len says weakly.

“Right,” Lisa says. She's got that magic power of young-sister-hood to manage to sound utterly disbelieving while also sounding scornful, yet not a touch sarcastic. “It’s just a job. A regular job. That pays. Like the sort you usually avoid by being a criminal.”

“But – I mean - we’re still _not dating_!”

“Are you sure?”

Len hangs up.

A few minutes later, Mick opens the door to the closer. “You done with your phone call yet?” he asks. “I made pizza.”

Len grumbles and follows Mick out. Mick's homemade pizza is not to be turned away lightly.

“How’s Lisa?”

“She thinks I’m dating Barry.”

“That’s ‘cuz –” 

“Don’t you start.”

* * *

“I am _so happy_ to be here, you have _no idea_ ,” Barry says to Kara. 

“Glad to hear my world being in peril is the high point of your day,” Kara teases.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Barry laughs. “Not that I’m not happy to help. Since you need someone fast.”

“It’s a three-point attack,” Kara protests, laughing. “We need three speedsters and we only have two Kryptonians!”

Barry doesn’t comment on the absence of any reference to her ex-boyfriend. He’s had those types of relationships, too, and unlike Kara he doesn't have to worry about people being on literal different planets and/or dimensions.

“Happy to help,” he says again. “But seriously, I’m also just happy to get away from my friends.”

“Why? Are they angry at you?” Kara cocks an eyebrow at him. “Did you change the timeline again?”

Barry snorts. “No. At least, I don’t think so. Maybe? People are being really weird, but I’m starting to suspect it’s more them being _trolls_ than an actual timeline change.”

“What’s the issue?”

“They think I’m dating someone that I’m not dating and they will just _not_ be convinced otherwise,” Barry explains.

Kara blinks. “Wait, they think you’re dating someone other than that Cold guy?”

“Yeah, it – wait, no! They think I’m dating _him_! That’s the _problem_! Also, his name is Snart.”

“Right, right. Snart. That villain that you’re dating.”

“Kara! Wait – wait, you haven’t even _met him_! He was _dead_ last time we all got together! How do you even _know_ about him?”

Kara starts laughing.

Barry puts his hands on his hips and glares at her. “Kara Zor-El Danvers, you tell me what’s going on right now.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” she giggles. “Iris made me promise.”

“ _Iris_ made you promise?”

“Apparently, you have ‘a pretty serious case of unresolved sexual tension’ with him,” Kara explains, still giggling. “Verbatim quote, by the way. But neither of you seem inclined to do anything about it and it’s driving everyone up the wall. So everyone got together and agreed to just pretend that you two were together already in the hopes that you’ll get the hint already.”

“I _knew_ there was a conspiracy!”

“Don’t hold it against them! I didn’t mean to tell!”

“I’m going to go back and –” 

Kara catches Barry by the arm.

“Don’t you stop me,” he warns her.

“No, no, you can go back and have your revenge,” she says soothingly. “Just – after we save the world?”

“Oh,” Barry says, flushing. “Uh. Right. That.”

“Yeah, that.”

“Right. Let’s go do that, then.”

“You’re great, Barry,” Kara says. “And seriously – if it’s really bugging you, tell them to knock it off. But if you like the guy and your friends and family have all accepted it already, why not just go for it?”

* * *

“Hey, guys!” Sara exclaims. 

“Sara!” Cisco cheers and runs forward to give her a hug before fist-bumping Jax. 

“Good to see you guys,” she says. 

“Just the two of you this week?”

“Everyone else is fixing the Waverider at a temporal rest stop,” Sara replies. “Don’t ask. Anyway, Jax was worrying over his baby, so I got the job of distracting him. Might as well do that here.”

“Sounds good,” Cisco says.

“We’re always happy to see you,” Caitlin adds.

They head into the other room.

Then they rapidly head back _out_.

“Why didn’t anyone tell us that Barry and Snart got together?” Jax hisses, his face burning hot. 

Sara’s just laughing. The only thing actually understandable she manages to get out is “Snart shoots, Snarts scores!” 

“That’s…new,” Caitlin says slowly.

“Very new,” Cisco echoes. “We were kinda playing a prank on Barry, pretending they were already together, but I didn’t actually think they _were_ , y’know?”

“You deserve everything you get from this,” Sara says gleefully. “Congrats on your inadvertantly overly successful matchmaking skills.”

“I’m going back to the Waverider,” Jax says.

“I’m going to tell Iris,” Cisco says, brightening.

* * *

“Think they’ve got the message?” Len asks Barry once their observers have barreled out of the room in embarrassment. 

“Think so,” Barry says. His eyes are vaguely glazed.

“With any luck, that will put them off our backs for a bit,” Len says, satisfied. He’d told Barry that his opinion was that the whole group wouldn’t let up until they thought they’d succeeded, and now, with that evidence, with luck they would be sufficiently distracted to –

“Hey, Snart?”

“Yeah?” Len replies, his mind already concocting plans for how to best take advantage of the group’s actual misconception as to their relationship, instead of the fake one. 

“Stop thinking and kiss me again.”

…apparently not that much of a misconception.

Well.

As Len likes to say – sometimes it’s time to throw away the plan.

Len smirks and draws Barry in.


End file.
